Hmm, you preferred to do the long reading questions last? I always thought they were best done first because of the higher mark weighting they have. Obviously you can't take all day on them, so you have to mentally allot yourself a timescale for finishing them and moving on to the short ones, but if I'm five minutes over time I'd rather be guessing a handful of two-pointers than five-pointers. Whichever way round you pick, I think it's vital to do some timed past papers so you know how fast you have to go to stay within the time limit.

My tip for the reading section is 'read the questions first and the passage second so you know what you're looking for and what you can safely skim'.

pm215 wrote:but if I'm five minutes over time I'd rather be guessing a handful of two-pointers than five-pointers.

If you're at the randomly guessing stage, I would say go back and hit the big 5 pointers in the reading section, but if you still have some time left and are trying to work out correct answers, I think that the short grammar questions give you more value for the time you have to put in on them (as the graph showed).

I think also that the long essays psych a lot of people out, and they end up getting flummoxed -- especially if they don't have much time left on the test.

Your idea about reading the questions first and skimming is great advice as well!

I also work the 読解・文法 section backwards. I find I can complete the grammar section (worth 40%) in less than 30% of the allotted time, so I would rather bang that out first. Keep in mind that, while each grammar question is worth much less, there are far more of them. Grammar constitutes 20% of the total text, reading 30%.

I set a time limit of 15 or 20 minutes for grammar and then work sections 4 - 6 in order. I then move through sections 3 - 1 in reverse order, with the exception of the graph questions. If the graph question is (text+graph)&(answers), I do it first. If it is (graph)&(text answers), I skip it. The latter takes too much time for a single question.

It's nice to hear these different approaches to the reading section. I still haven't quite worked out what the best way to go about it is for me...so far I figured the larger texts with more questions should be done first, especially when you're running out of time (which I will, for sure). But the short bits tend to be a little easier....Spin, I don't quite get what you're saying about those graph question. Actually I sort of concluded (answer&text) ones are usually fairly easy....so I think I'll do that one first.

The last couple of days I was doing really well on past tests. Even kept scoring well over 60% for listening. But today several try-outs got me from 61 to 31%, so now I'm absolutely depressed

O well, I've got some study time this week, I'll give it another shot tomorrow....

There are two basic types of graph questions. One has only a few lines of text introducing what data the graphs represent , followed by four text answers that describe the graph's trends. The other presents a paragraph describing an unlabeled graph and asks you to choose between one letter answers identifying each part. The latter can be answered with much less reading. Flipping through a few back tests should make this clear.